The Fake Smell of Death

Four years ago, standing under the Arizona sun, Detective Mark Green thought about the search ahead and felt a little queasy. Four eyewitnesses had each told the police a similar tale of young children murdered, eight years earlier, on a moonlit desert night. On this day the Phoenix police would search for their remains, reportedly buried somewhere on this desolate plateau southwest of the city. His partner, Green remembers, was far more enthusiastic--his shiny brown coat was twitching with excitement, his tail whacking against Green’s leg as they stood side by side. Judge, a chocolate Labrador retriever, was accustomed to sniffing out dope, but recently he’d been learning a new scent, that of a human corpse. His education, though, was somewhat experimental: he had learned this scent not from real bodies but from an artificially concocted perfume that purportedly captured the smell of death. Green now broke open an ampoule ...